ERS Educational Award

Professor Philip H. Quanjer

Recognising a European respiratory health professional who has made a contribution of extraordinary magnitude to education in respiratory medicine at a European or international level.

Trained as a specialist in internal medicine and Professor of Pulmonary Physiology at Leiden University, he was one of the founders of applied respiratory research in The Netherlands and far beyond – starting from the 1970s.

He pushed not only for national collaboration (as honorary member of the Dutch Lung Foundation), but also became one of the pioneers of European synergies that started within the European community for coal and steel, the roots of the EU.

Prof. Quanjer was a recipient of the European Respiratory Society's Sadoul Lecture Award and was a founder of the European Respiratory Journal. He crossed bridges between pulmonology, paediatrics, physiology, epidemiology, engineering, information technology, and statistics.

From the Global Lung Initiative, he was actively contributing to improving the definition and description of what is normal and what is not, with regard to lung function.

Prof. Quanjer was an excellent teacher, always trying to deliver education at a high level. In the early-days of the internet he built a multilingual website so that people could easily access the basics of spirometry and more recently the GLI data and other information relating to lung function. He donated this website to ERS and it remains to be a highly valued resource promoting the understanding of respiratory physiology and pathophysiology, with emphasis on the measurement and interpretation of spirometric test results.

Last but not least he was author and co-author of 167 reviewed publications.